Until 1917, most Jews of the Russian Empire were restricted to a
region called the Pale of Settlement, whey they created their own
distinctive folk culture. In 1914 the writer, socialist
revolutionary, and ethnographer, Sh. An-sky, produced a massive
Yiddish ethnographic questionnaire to document this culture,
including many questions concerning Jewish customs and beliefs
connected to pregnancy and childbirth. In The Jewish Dark Continent:
Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement (Harvard University
Press), UCSC Professor Nathaniel Deutsch has translated An-sky's
questionnaire into English for the first time, placing it within a
rich historical context. Collaborating with Deutsch and inspired by
her deep interest in Jewish women's folk traditions, Debra Olin has
created illuminating artworks that represent and explore the
dangerous, magical, and above all, powerful experience of pregnancy
and childbirth in the Pale of Settlement.